I rolled the second car that I ever owned, a Toyota 4 Runner. This was winter in Colorado, two weeks before the 2002 Olympic trials. I was driving in the outside lane, and my rear tire caught some black ice, and we totally turned sideways to the poin...
When I turned 16, I got my driver's license like the rest of my classmates, but I also got an extra present: a two-day practice session in a Formula Ford: my first open-wheel racing car and the first step on the ladder toward becoming a professional ...
I went to Coachella once, and it was only to go see Leonard Cohen. I got in the car and sat through all the crazy traffic in L.A. to get there - instead of a two hour drive, it takes, like, six hours. Then I watched his set and turned around and left...
I realised that you could easily turn any room into a cinema with a projector, so I went on and on at my parents for one. They eventually got me a projector for Christmas when I was ten, and I realised I'd made a ridiculous mistake - I'd forgotten to...
My dad had a stroke. It's one of those life-changing events. It was right around the time I was turning 40. We were doing 'L.A. Law,' and I got this call that my dad was in Rome and had had a stroke. I want to stress that it wasn't a huge stroke, but...
Our dad hugged us and kissed us so much that some friends and relatives complained that he was going to turn us into sissies or homosexuals. But my dad didn't care. Let them raise their kids in a reserved and reticent way. He grew up in Israel, and h...
I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good st...
My mother's songs are really turning out to be masterpieces. I have inherited this incredible legacy and am so fortunate to bathe in her sensibilities. It is tinged with tragedy. I'd much rather she was here in person, but there is still a positive f...
I think I am becoming obsessive-compulsive. David Beckham apparently turns all the Diet Coke cans in his fridge to face the same way every morning, and I nerdily sharpen all the pencils in my pot before sitting down to work.
Diet cola is my absolute favorite drink in the world; I used to drink four cans a day. But to help me cut down, I've turned it into a treat. Now, instead of having dessert, I'll have a can of diet soda. Putting a limit on how often I can drink it has...
When I started 'DailyGrace,' I was dating a 26-year-old guy I thought was the funniest person in the world. My creation process every day was imagining him watching my videos and wondering, 'Will he laugh at this?' But somehow that's turned into an a...
I checked to see if there'd been a really good book published in the last few decades. Then I started with what Cleopatra would have read, asking myself, 'What can we know about her education?' It turns out to be a very great deal, and bizarrely, no ...
It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technolo...
If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and qui...
The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath.
I remember my wife wanted me to go see 'Contagion,' and I was like, 'Oh my God, why would I want to see that movie?' I mean, I'll just have nightmares and it will freak me out. It turned out that I really enjoyed it; I thought it was very well done.
Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the read...
My greatest point is my persistence. I never give up in a match. However down I am, I fight until the last ball. My list of matches shows that I have turned a great many so-called irretrievable defeats into victories.
There was one I did called 'The Phantom,' and we did a sequel to that called, 'Return of the Phantom.' I thought there was wonderful stuff in that. There was another show I love called 'Man Beast,' where I was the star, and I turned into a Beast; one...
A man came up to me at a party and asked if I wanted to be in his video game. I of course said yes. And then it turned out it was 'Assassin's Creed', so that was great. They let me ad lib a lot and mess about and be very snarky indeed, and I'm thrill...
I fantasised about F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' - I loved it, and then I read everything J. D. Salinger had to offer. Then I was turned on to Kerouac, and his spontaneous prose, his stream of consciousness way of writing. I admired him so...
